It is well known that a bread knife, of the type in which a thin blade is held under tension by a bow frame, is much more efficient than a thicker blade with a handle fixed to one end of the blade. Known slicing knives of this type have the disadvantage that the user's fingers come into abutment with a support surface at the end of the slicing operation and that the blade tends to twist, because the long axis of the handle is laterally offset from the plane of the blade.
Known support boards for holding a mass of food, such as a loaf of bread during the slicing operation and for cutting slices of equal thickness, are not adapted to be used with a slicing knife of the above-noted type. Moreover, such support boards are usually meant to extend under a whole loaf of bread, with the result that they have a substantial size and are therefore not very convenient for use on kitchen counters, which very often have not very much space to spare.